Nothing new to see here. Pacific Rim borrows from every other action movie but ineffectively.

Rating: 4/10 (11 July 2013)

I had great expectations for this movie based primarily on the fact that Guillermo del Toro was in charge. While his influence is obvious in that the visuals and design are impressive, there is nothing new here in terms of the plot or script. Anyone who has seen The Avengers, Cloverfield, Godzilla and Real Steel has basically seen this movie's main ideas on screen already, all of them are combined in Pacific Rim but in this case the whole is a lot less than the sum of this parts. I watched this in IMAX and the visual effects were well suited to the format, however, the destruction of cities and fights with giant robots are not enough to carry the film. Idris Elba does an admirable job with a limited script but the remainder of the characters are as clichéd as they come with the two academics, Gottlieb and Newton, being particularly irritating.
While I give this a score of 4 stars these are for the visual effects and not the jaded, threadbare plot.